Just plain dumb, and definitely not hot

SUZANNE TENNER Sarah Roemer and Nicholas D'Agosto star in 'Fired Up,' in which two way-past-school-age high schoolers enroll themselves in cheerleader camp so they can chase girls in short skirts.

Fired Up. (PG-13) Screen Gems (94 min.). Directed by Will Gluck. With Nicholas D'Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer. Now playing in New Jersey. ONE STAR.

"Fired Up" is a movie full of disgusting slang (how about "meatloafs" for breasts?), made-up dirty words ("snootch," "padonkadonk"), explicit discussions of sexual acts (don't ask) and about 300 teenagers searching frantically for liquor or intercourse.

It is rated PG-13. You know, "Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13."

You think?

Every decade or so we get a new, all-out, dirty-joke comedy about randy teenagers -- "Porky's," "American Pie," "Superbad." Some, like "Animal House," are actually well-made; others are, well, "Zapped." But all have R ratings, and deliver the gratuitous dirty-joke thrills they promise.

"Fired Up" does neither.

It may have an okay-for-middle-school PG-13, but this is an R movie with all the "adult" material only slightly obscured. So kids get drunk, but not our heroes; there are jokes about every kind of sex, but nothing is actually shown. It's all cheap hypocrisy, a stripper with pasties.

Worse, it's not even funny. Or sexy.

That shouldn't be too surprising as it's the product of Maxim magazine, a publication that briefly made a name for itself as a slightly cleaned-up, mostly dumbed-down Playboy, offering cheesecake (but no explicit nudity) and dirty jokes (but no real erotica).

The story follows Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen, two way-past-school-age high schoolers, as they enroll themselves in cheerleader camp so they can chase girls in short skirts. This they do, for the next 90 minutes, while mugging furiously for the camera.

The script actually has a couple of good lines and bits of inventive dialogue, but nothing here really works, no matter how loud the cast screams at us to laugh.

D'Agosto is merely pleasant as the less raunchy of the two boys. As his oversexed partner, Olsen is aggressively offensive -- and, at nearly 32, not only way too old for this, but also only four years younger than Molly Sims, insultingly cast as the "older woman." (Sarah Roemer escapes, mostly unscathed, as the lone "nice girl.")

The script is credited to a mysterious, off-the-grid character called "Freedom Jones" which I'm assuming is a pseudonym. The direction is courtesy of Will Gluck, who should have used a pseudonym. The production company is Gross Entertainment -- pretty appropriate, considering the sleazy parade of sex toys, sexist assumptions and snickering homophobia.

And the ratings folks think this "may" be inappropriate for children?

Excuse me, I hear someone at the gates. Must be the barbarians, here at last.